I can’t disagree with you at all there. Thank goodness for indie epubs!

I have been lucky thus far – of hundreds and hundreds of ebooks I have, I’ve not had to work hard to convert them in any way (touch wood)…but I know all to well it’s not the case for others. So sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud, LOL! so far I’ve just downloaded and pressed go, so I’ve got no tragic story to tell. Might (actually, probably guaranteed) not be that way in the future though.

I don’t think LCD technology has been given the chance due to lack of interest and lack of newer screens really.
OLED is the mind blower of pure display goodness with both color and clarity.

In other words the whole eye strain deal that eInk got people sold on is already being shown for the myth it is in the smart phone market and the media pads being produced now. It was not that brilliant a plan anyway and even battery life is a simple matter of new technology versus old.

eInk uses more old tech than the new products coming out in the Smart Phones which are already showing up as better eBook Reader options than eInk devices.

I don’t!

That’s the whole point. To admit otherwise, to ignore the lack of support customers accept daily and even the lack of available and reasonably priced options out there would be a lie that we see repeated again and again by yet another company trying to scam the public into thinking that they have the final solution for only $300.00 or $400.00 or more.

When really they are locking people in to their particular DRM and their particular delivery channel for eBooks that in the end is really not a good deal.

BUT! You have to know that from experience and that experience is too costly in my opinion.

The tech limitations of the e-ink screen may prevent multifunction ebook readers from dominating the market; the combination of eyestrain and short battery life on LCD screens balances against the slower page turns and color limitations fairly well. E-ink is lousy for websurfing–but if your goal is 20+ hours/week reading in addition to internet time, that may not matter.

Since some readers are now as little as $200, they’ve caught mainstream attention. (And far too many people think Amazon invented the dedicated ebook reader, when they’re actually more than 10 years old. This is tech that’s been trying to sort out its options for a long time.)

Expect to see about three years of bizarre competition to provide the ebook reader with the most bells and whistles while *useful* tech development languishes. After that point, expect Apple to jump into the market with a device that combines several of the most useful options with a sleek exterior and a cool name and walk away with full market control, while all the predecessors are consigned to legacy-device status.

While the tech whore side of me likes shiny new devices that do lots of cool things, the ‘just wants to read’ side of me enjoys not having the temptation to do all those other things. (I also like the no back light, but each to their own on that front).

But that said, I didn’t fork out the $299 (at the time I got my 505) as I was sneaky and used my credit card points and got it free …sort of *cough* checks interest rate and dies *cough*. I’d probably only be thinking now of getting a dedicated reader with the $199 pricepoint of the Sony Pocket otherwise, or making do with my TX, the computer, or just recently the iPhone.

Just my two cents worth.